By David Sanford | For Cello and Piano | 12′

Title: 22 Part 1
Composer: David Sanford
Year Composed: 1995
Instrumentation: Cello and Piano
Duration: 12′
Format: Score + Part
Catalogue Number: OM0301

Printed Edition Price: $45.00

PDF Price: $40.00

Listen to excerpts of 22 Part 1:

Who’s playing? Matt Haimovitz, cello, Geoffrey Burleson, piano.

Geoffrey Burleson writes in the liner notes to the Oxingale recording:

22 Part 1 immediately projects a sense of defiant individuality between the two instruments by starting with a dynamic solo piano cadenza. Initially very gestural, a kind of chromatic jazz bass line slowly emerges in the piano’s opening. The cello joins in with a few interjections and long sustained notes, and finally asserts itself with its own soloistic line over a dissonant funk groove from the piano. Then, the cello gets its own cadenza, which is followed by a quiet reconciliation between the two instruments, and a climactic showdown. The second movement begins with alternating ethereal and declamatory passages, finally leading to a funk apotheosis. The title of the work was inspired by an uncanny ubiquity of the number “22” in the composer’s life. As Dave explains it:

“The number 22 has always seemed to pop up in my life. I was born on August 22, my wife on December 22; I loved Mingus, who was born on February 22, 1922; many of my sports heroes wore the number; and I lived at two houses with that number in Boston (one when I was 22 years old), where I met my first girlfriend, who lived at 22 Symphony Road.”

This work is recorded on Oxingale Records’ album Odd Couple. Click here to go to the album page on iTunes.